No State Fair, no problem! The MA financial roller coaster has more than enough ups and downs to make a school business manager a bit lightheaded. To help out, we’re sharing a few updates to keep in mind during your year-end reporting:
For many districts, a large percentage of their Medicaid revenue comes from personal care assistance and special transportation services. Unfortunately, these were the services that were eliminated due to COVID-19 restrictions. To help alleviate the effects of this reduction, the federal participation percentage (FPP) has been increased from 50% to 56.2%. The increase will be effective starting with the first remittance payment for 2020 and ending when the federal government deems that the COVID-19 pandemic is over.
On May 8th, you will have received a message from the DHS in the Private Letter folder of your MN-ITS mailbox. The letter notifies you that the DHS’s review of suspended claims for 2017-2018 is complete. If you had claims that were denied due to eligibility reasons, DHS reviewed them to ensure there were no other Medicaid numbers for the recipient. Out of the 322,786 total claims reviewed, approximately 7% were paid out. Your district does not need to take any further action regarding these claims.
In addition, on May 27th the DHS emailed all school districts and charters a memo regarding the Annual Data Reporting Form, which is due by July 5th, 2020. This form is used to report time and encounter data for all services billed for the 2018-2019 school year. If this is not completed, your final rate will be re-calculated to zero. Any revenue paid to your district for 2018-2019 services would be recouped from future payments. This is a simple form to run in MA Forms, but if you have any questions, our team is here to help!
Lastly, if you have had a change in billing staff, we would encourage you to email kristin.smith@state.mn.us to ensure that your district has access to all the updated information from DHS, especially required forms or reports that would impact enrollment or rates.
If you have any questions about year-end reporting or processes, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We are here to support you!